With globalization helping to make business travel more important than ever, the discipline of travel management is now crucial for optimizing overall performance. It is important to understand that corporate travel is complicated, so it should not be arranged haphazardly, or at the last minute. In this article, you will learn more about travel management itself and the value of travel management companies helping to optimize your strategy.

Table of Contents:

What is Travel Management?

Travel management is a specialism based on organizing corporate travel, tracking travel expenses, and devising a comprehensive travel strategy. As a discipline, it is intended to help businesses and their employees optimize how they deal with their travel needs. This means ensuring everything is handled properly while minimizing any negative impact on productivity and financial results.

What Are the Benefits of Travel Management for Companies?

A major benefit of travel management is the ability to reduce costs associated with travel. This can include everything from airline tickets, to hotel room rates and travel insurance. Generally, travel management specialists will have industry contacts and enough experience to find or negotiate the best deals.

By handing responsibility for this to a dedicated travel manager, or a travel management team, individual employees can spend far more time doing core day-to-day tasks and less time planning trips.

Once a travel strategy is in place, those offering travel management services can also help you to continually improve that strategy, by reporting on your business travel expenses and suggesting useful changes.

In-House Travel Agents vs. External Travel Agents

There are two main approaches that businesses can take: handling travel management in-house, or outsourcing it to an external travel agency, and both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages.

In-House Travel Agent

Using an in-house travel agent for travel management purposes means that responsibility for managing your travel strategy stays within your own business. You will either employ someone specifically for the role, or somebody already under your employment will take on these responsibilities.

In terms of advantages, this allows you to scrutinize the travel agent’s work more easily than with an external agent, and you also avoid paying the commission or subscription fee an external agent would demand. On the other hand, you either need to employ someone for the role, or have a current employee dividing their time.

External Corporate Travel Agencies

The alternative is to work with an external corporate travel management agency. This means outsourcing travel management responsibility to another business specializing in this discipline. You will not employ the person managing your travel strategy, but you will pay them via a commission on bookings or a subscription fee.

Advantages of this approach include freeing up your own employees to do other things and gaining expert insight from a company that solely focuses on travel management. There is also the likelihood of obtaining cheaper travel rates. It can, however, be harder to scrutinize the precise work they do, so a level of trust is required.

What Are the Tasks of a Travel Agent?

Whether you employ a travel manager or agent or opt to outsource to an external company, the core tasks will be very similar. Some of the most important functions and responsibilities are explained below:

1. Travel Planning

On a basic level, business travel needs to be planned ahead of time, so that all bases are covered. This involves, among other things, selecting the right dates for travel, identifying the best times for flights, the best location for accommodation, whether or not airport transfers are needed, and so on.

Leaving travel planning in the capable hands of a travel manager, or travel management company, will help to ensure nothing is forgotten. Their in-depth knowledge of the travel industry can also be invaluable.

2. Negotiation

A large part of corporate travel management involves organizing business travel for the best possible price. To achieve this, negotiation is likely to be needed with various vendors.

Travel management companies are ideally equipped to handle this responsibility because their staff will be experienced in negotiations. They are also much more likely to have close contacts in different parts of the travel industry, allowing them to secure special rates that might otherwise be unattainable to you.

3. Arranging Accommodation

Another key responsibility when managing travel arrangements is organizing suitable accommodations for business travelers. This means looking at all available options, including hotels, bed and breakfasts, and shared accommodation. It also means booking the right number of rooms at the right price for the right time and number of days.

When companies have insufficient time, they look for cheap accommodation or accommodation in the right location. However, a travel manager will be able to take the time to weigh up all of the different needs, assess them, and find accommodation that ticks as many boxes as possible, while staying under budget.

4. Transportation

Transportation is a huge part of travel planning, and a good travel management company or professional can help you handle all your transportation needs in advance. This could include booking flights, securing a rental car, arranging airport transfers, purchasing train tickets, or booking discount travel passes.

Optimizing your corporate travel strategy requires all of these things to be organized in advance, for the best possible price, while guaranteeing all business travelers get to where they need to be on time.

5. Meeting and Event Planning

Generally, business travel will be centered on attending meetings or business events; plenty of work goes into organizing this. For example, you will need to ensure everybody attending an event has the right credentials to get in and knows where they are going and what they are doing.

If you host a business event, the planning process becomes even more complicated. Either way, high-quality travel management services will be beneficial, helping you to cope with the logistical side.

6. Manage Travel Expenses

Finally, managing travel expenses is arguably the main part of the job, and a professional travel manager will be far better equipped to handle this than someone with no real experience. Indeed, good travel management companies will help you to simplify expenses, so that accommodation and extras all come under one bill.

Working with a professional company can also help you to manage your company finances. Consolidated financial reports make for easier reading, and your travel manager can analyze these reports and pinpoint areas for improvement.

How Travel Companies Can Benefit From Travel Management Companies

In today’s globalized world, regular corporate travel is now a simple fact of life for many organizations. However, it is also becoming more common for businesses to turn to corporate travel agents or professional travel management companies for assistance. An agent can then help a business to optimize its travel strategy in several ways, often by taking on responsibility for booking flights, car rentals, accommodation, and events. For hotel owners, corporate travel agents are an invaluable link to business travelers.

Most corporate travel agents will turn to a global distribution system, or GDS system for short, to book accommodation, flights, and transportation for business clients. With this in mind, it is important that companies operating in the travel industry, like airlines, car rentals, or hotels looking to maximize their appeal to business travelers, also connect with the main GDS systems. Doing so will allow travel agents to access real-time information about, for example, hotel room rates and availability, increasing the chances that they turn to your hotel for their business travel needs and boosting your revenue.

Our “Global Distribution System (GDS): What Are the Benefits for Hotels?“ article provides more information about the main GDS systems, how they work, and how they can benefit companies operating in the travel industry.

List of Travel Management Companies

A growing number of companies are outsourcing responsibility for managing business travel to travel management companies, benefiting from their industry contacts, specialist knowledge, and 24/7 support. For hotels, connecting with the global distribution systems these travel agents use can help to attract more business travel guests.

In the article “Corporate Travel Agents for Hotels to Gain More Business Travellers”, you will learn more about the role of corporate travel agents, find out why companies are increasingly outsourcing travel management to them, and gain an understanding of why these travel agents are valuable for hotels looking to attract business travelers.

Understanding Bleisure Travel as a Travel Manager

For those involved with travel management, it is important to keep pace with all emerging trends, and one of the most significant is that of bleisure travel. In essence, this describes travel that combines business and leisure elements and often involves business travelers extending the duration of a stay to enjoy other activities.

In the “What is Bleisure Travel? What Are Bleisure Travellers Looking For?” article, you can explore the topic of bleisure travel further, to understand what it is, why it is growing, and what these travelers want.

Best Job Boards to Find Travel Management Jobs

Individuals seeking travel management jobs must utilize the right channels during their job search. Travel job boards represent one of the best options for this, but there are many job boards to choose from, so it is important to focus efforts on those most likely to advertise these positions.

In the article “Travel Jobs: The Best Travel Industry Job Boards for Your Career“, you can explore some of the most popular job boards focused on the travel industry and find the ideal travel management vacancy.

Corporate travel is a key component of running a modern business and represents one of the largest expenses, along with salaries and marketing costs. For this reason, you must get the most value for your money. Travel management can assist with this while ensuring all logistical elements are handled properly.

More Tips Regarding Corporate Travel

The corporate travel market is receiving an increased focus from many in the travel industry, partly business travelers often spend more money on their travels, especially when their employer covers their costs. However, more importantly, business travel is growing, thanks to factors like globalization and the availability of flights. In the following articles, you will find more information about the corporate travel market:

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This article is written by:

Martijn Barten

Hi, I am Martijn Barten, founder of Revfine.com. With 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry, I specialize in optimizing revenue by combining revenue management with marketing strategies. I have successfully developed, implemented, and managed revenue management and marketing strategies for individual properties and multi-property portfolios.